A relatively unknown
provincial official, David Mahlobo, was elected to the ANC’s NEC on the Zuma
ticket, as were several dozen other committed Zuma loyalists. He was appointed
minister of state security shortly afterwards.

On Wednesday, 7 May 2014
Ramaphosa helped the ANC secure 62,15 percent of the vote in the general
election, securing Zuma’s second term.

State capture and the white-anting
of state institutions by Zuma loyalists increased drastically after the 2014
election, right under Ramaphosa’s nose.

The two top leaders of the
Hawks, Anwa Dramat and Shadrack Sibiyia, were forced to quit their jobs in
October of that year.

Dramat’s successor, the now
notorious Berning Ntlemeza, and the powerful suspended head of crime
intelligence, Richard Mdluli, were, according to court documents, involved in
this move.

Also in 2014, the
intelligence services launched a dirty tricks campaign against the specialist
investigating unit at SARS that led to the removal of the entire senior
leadership. More than fifty managers resigned after an old Zuma friend and MK
comrade, Tom Moyane, was appointed to head up the service.

Mxolisi Nxasana was also removed
from his position as head of the National Prosecuting Authority and was
replaced by Shaun Abrahams in June 2015.

The next victims were two top
officials in state security, Mo Shaik and Gibson Njenje.

Dramat, Sibiyia, the SARS
investigators, Nxasana, Shaik and Njenje had one thing in common: they all
launched investigations into the financial affairs of the president and/or his
wealthy business benefactors shortly before they were axed.

Mahlobo, Moyane, Ntlemeza and
Abrahams were responsible for the continuous harassment of former finance
minister Pravin Gordhan as part of a campaign to take over the national
treasury.

This all happened on
Ramaphosa’s watch as deputy president.

Between 2012 and early 2017
Ramaphosa never spoke out against these abuses.

I know for a fact that
several of these Zuma victims had given Ramaphosa full reports of what had
transpired and what their investigations had revealed.

He was silent after the abuse
of the Waterkloof air base by the Guptas in 2013; we never heard his voice on
any of the other Gupta revelations; and he allowed the appointment of Gupta
proxies Faith Muthambi (2014) and Mosebenzi Zwane (2015) to the Cabinet without
protest.

It is predictable that the
smear campaign against Ramaphosa and those public figures in the ANC who
support him will intensify in the next three months. The other prominent
presidential candidate outside the Zuma camp, Lindiwe Sisulu, could also become
a target.

Who is driving this campaign?

There is no way that Mahlobo
is not involved. It can’t happen if he’s not a central figure.

He has the enthusiastic support
of the director general of state security, Arthur Fraser.

The Hawks and SAPS’s crime
intelligence unit have long abandoned their crime-fighting mandate and have
become Zuma bodyguards.

I have been told that Zuma’s
most trusted operator, General Richard Mdluli, on suspension with full pay for
six years already, is still pulling the strings at crime intelligence.

All three these institutions
have the capacity to intercept phone calls and emails.

Fraser left state security in
2009 after the parallel intelligence network he started and the hundreds of
millions of rands wasted or stolen in the process, were exposed. After his
departure his company got several multi-million rand contracts with the state.

The detailed dossier on these
crimes have quietly been shelved and in September last year Zuma re-appointed
him.

Zuma’s sons Edward and
Duduzane, the Gupta-funded BLF gang of Andile Mnxgitama, the ANC Youth League
and Gupta-aligned social media campaigns like WMCLeaks have in recent times and
will in future be a part of the anti-Ramaphosa smear campaign, sometimes by
targeting his senior backers like Gordhan, Trevor Manuel, Jackson Mthembu,
Mcebisi Jonas and Derek Hanekom.

When the intelligence
community targeted SARS in 2014, the Sunday Times was their vehicle of choice.

This time it is the Sunday
Independent, whose editor, Steve Motale, is a highly compromised Zuma
sycophant.

The Gupta television station
ANN7, recently “bought” by Mzwanele Manyi, proved over the last two days that
it would ably assist Motale and others in the dirty tricks campaign.

There are some lessons to be
learnt from all this.

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